Stories
The old, purple-cloaked man sat in the chair in the bar. Despite the civil atmosphere the city attempted to give off, Ardougne’s bars were some of the rowdiest places in Kandarin. Quietly sipping his Wizard’s Mind Bomb, he began paging through a book he was reading. The elder noticed that a wild group of men at a center table began causing a ruckus as one of them, a large, dark-bearded, working class brute, started to approach him. He sat down at the table across from the old man.
“My friends and I rolled the dice to see who would ask you this. You look like the type of guy who knows a lot about the world. So please, tell me a story.” The young man was greeted with a puzzled stare in return.
“Alright,” the man said as he brushed his books aside and clasped his hands.
“I remember once when I was about your age that there was a war. Now, this war was unlike any war that had ever shaped this world. It was…unique, in more ways than one. And one of those ways was the size. This war was on a massive scale.”
“Ha, there haven’t been any large wars in the last hundred years, unless your referring to the Gnomic wars…” the young man scoffed. His friends at the other table were starring at him.
“No,” the old man smiled, looking back at his younger years. “This war was much lager than the Gnomic wars. As I was saying, I was about your age when I enlisted. We began by marching at once into the Wilderness of the North.”
“The wilderness? Are you out of your mind?” the man scoffed. “Anyway, go on…”
The man’s smile faded. “We were attempting to either route our opponents or drive them south. There, we had a much lager army, with seventeen battalions and three legions of soldiers waiting for the signal. One night, when we finally caught up to them, we did not rest. Instead, we snuck up on them. What we underestimated was how quickly their reaction was.
“Instead of us surprising them, they immediately woke up and began fighting us fiercely. We were driven all the way south, towards the edge of the wilderness where our large army awaited. Thinking that my army was the opponent’s army, they began attacking us as well. It wasn’t until half of our army- several thousand men, mind you-had been slaughtered that we realized our mistake. We attempted to fight back against our opponents, but because of our foolishly fatal mistake, we suffered the consequences and lost.”
“That sounds a bit far fetched,” the young man said as he stood up. “I’m going to go back to my friends to tell them all about it.”
He immediately got up and began talking to his friends. The old man began reading again, but a few minutes later, the young man was back, this time with his group of acquaintances from the other table.
“Hello again, old man. Would you mind telling us all another story?”
“Alright.” Somewhat annoyed, he pushed his books to the side once more. “Well, let me think…“ he sat for a moment as he pondered his memory in search of a story that would intrigue the young men. “…ah yes. I have just the story for you. I was traveling the desert in search of an artifact of great power…a staff, I believe. As it happened, I had lost my other one, so I needed a replacement. A local elder told me that a replacement could be found in a nearby pyramid, so I-”
“-a pyramid?” one of the young man’s friends intruded into the tale. “What’s that?”
Irritated, the old man flipped a glass which had somewhat square sides over. “Like this, with a point, alright? As I was saying, I needed to search this pyramid for a duplicate of my old staff. As it turned out, there were mummies in the pyramid that-”
“HA!” the first young man burst into laughter, soon followed by his friends. “Mummies? You’re a joke, old man!”
“Can I finish my story?” the old man said, a tear in his eye that he refused to shed for the immature boys who dared make a mockery of him.
“Go on, what have we to lose?”
“I had to battle several dozen mummies-at once, mind you. They were fierce fighters, but I soon realized their weakness.”
“Which was?”
“Their lack of speed. I myself had a hard wooden staff that was tipped with sharpened metal at each end. Those tips slowed me down quite a bit, so my attacks- as powerful as they were- were slow. The mummies themselves had very powerful blows which were about the same frequency as my own.”
“And let me guess, you pulled out a mystically powerful short sword and slew them all?” one of the boys mocked.
“No. I grasped my staff firmly and slammed it with all my might against the hard brick wall. This effectively shattered the upper half of it. With much of the weight taken off the blade, I could fight off the undead much more quickly. Soon, I had sent all of the atrocities to the grave for the second time!” The elderly man had a short moment of remembrance before the young men burst into laughter.
“HAHA! You are cracked in the head, old man!”
Enraged, he kept his anger to himself. The boys continued their laughter for several minutes. “Would you like me to tell you another story?”
“Of course I would! You give me the laugh of a lifetime!”
The old man motioned for a waiter boy-who looked himself a few years younger than the brutes who were making a joke of him-to bring him his belongings he had set by the door when he came in. The men whom he was about to tell the story to quickly silenced.
“Once, while fighting in the same war that I told you of earlier, and with the same staff that I spoke of just now, I found myself cornered by several…traitors of my Lord. There were a dozen demons, several vampires and a horde of werewolves.”
Were it not for a sudden cold chill that burst the shutters open, the men would have laughed. Instead, they shivered as the winds began howling.
“How did you kill them?” one of the young men asked with a slight grin.
“Like this,” the old man stood up suddenly, and the winds howled even worse than before. The staff he had been carrying, one which bore an ancient symbol of an ancient, forgotten god, began glowing a violent purple color. Suddenly, a wave of light blue and white energy shot forth from the head of the staff onto the feet of the first young man who originally had spoken to him.
“My legs! My legs are freezing! Help me! Help me!” The man was silenced with another spell-this one dark crimson. Immediately, thin, red blood began pouring down his face. The old man pointed his weapon at his next victim, and a wave of ice shot out of it, completely freezing the hands and feet of one of the young men to the floor. The elderly mage, with strength unnatural for such old age, smashed the heavy, metal staff on the back of the frozen man. A crack was heard and he stopped his squirming.
Turning to the next victims, the man cast spell upon spell against those who mocked him. People were fleeing out of the bar with their lives, through the windows as well as the door, whatever was nearest to them. As soon as he had sufficiently slaughtered those who had made a joke of his tales, he walked out of the door and the building behind him burst into flames.
You made a few questionable word choices, like using some words twice or more in a short passage ("an ancient symbol of an ancient, forgotten god"), but overall, I really liked it, even if it was a little predictable. 
